How To Enhance Your Collaboration

Collaboration for lawyers is more often taken for granted than actually thought about. Until you need to collaborate and something goes wrong that is. These problems can range from using a collaboration service that limits the number of users that can collaborate simultaneously to services that are not compatible with other collaboration services. Some cloud services only allow collaboration between two people, while others allow much more. And the majority of collaboration tools are not compatible for collaboration between multiple cloud services. In this article we will take a look at two of the top collaboration services - Google Drive and Basecamp - and we will show you how you can collaborate with clients, witnesses or other sources between these two collaboration tools, and others.

Basecamp for case management

Basecamp is the ultimate project management service, and it is the perfect tool to handle case management as well. Basecamp provides useful tools for lawyers to create, edit and store case files. All files are organized by case, time-stamped and each file can be collaborated on. The limitations are that users cannot collaborate on files across other platforms. So all users must use Basecamp to collaborate on files or documents. However, not everyone uses Basecamp. There are many people who lawyers deal with in the duration of a case that don't use Basecamp- many of them have probably never even heard of it. So if a lawyer needs to collaborate on a document with these people, he must have them install Basecamp and add them to a project or he must use a service that his source uses. But this means he must then download his project files from Basecamp manually, upload them to the new service, and then they can collaborate on the file. Quite time-consuming, huh!

Google Drive provides superior collaboration

Google Drive offers superior collaboration for lawyers, due to the high number of users that are allowed to simultaneously revise files and documents, and because a high number of internet users have Google accounts. Google allows up to 50 users to collaborate simultaneously on files, which can be useful for meetings between clients, witnesses and other lawyers. The limitation of Google Drive is that it (like Basecamp) does not provide collaboration access for files across multiple platforms. So if a lawyer needs to collaborate on a document in Basecamp with a client or witness that uses Google Drive, how can this happen without manually transferring the file from Basecamp to Google Drive? This is where cloudHQ comes in.

cloudHQ provides collaboration between multiple cloud services

cloudHQ provides automated, real-time sync between multiple cloud services. So if a lawyer needs to collaborate on a document in Basecamp with a client or other source that uses Google Drive, this becomes an automated process. So files from Basecamp can be automatically replicated to Google Drive so both collaborating parties will be looking at the same file in different cloud services. Each time that the lawyer updates the file in Basecamp, the revisions are automatically replicated to the file in Google Drive. And each time the client or other source updates the file in Google Drive, those revisions are automatically updated in Basecamp. This process can be used for multiple users across multiple cloud services using the sophisticated technology that cloudHQ provides. And the cloudHQ process is simple to use- just set it and forget it, everything is completely automated and runs in the background, completely invisible to all users.